Elements

If I were to write a story, and someday I may, what are all the delights that I would want within?

It would have to have animals. Mysterious, dark ravens or other corvidae. Wolves as friends or foes. I like the ideas of bees as they were used in The Starless Sea, industrious and inquisitive. Foxes as either trickster or guide. Observing but silent mice.

It would have to have magic, probably the vague and ill defined kind. There would be seers and rituals and prophecy. Omens and portents, cryptic pieces of folklore in hidden places. Superstition.

The mysteries and lore and rituals would wind themselves around herbs and parchments, libraries and mirrors, keys and ruins. They would manifest through books, art, crafts, tables and meals, and work done by hand.

The story would be one of deep friendships and love but only occasionally the romantic kind. A quiet story of rather unremarkable lives of ordinary people woven through streams and woodlands, creeks and forests.

And it would be all for me.